Restaurant update
I only eat out once a week, if that, these days, so I haven't been out as much, but I do have a couple of ratifications of Tyler Cowen endorsements:
Kotobuki (MacArthur Blvd.) is $1/piece sushi. They don't take reservations, and they don't have a wide selection, and I don't buy into Tyler's assertion that this is the best sushi in town, but I will say that it's good enough to be the best sushi value in the city, and perhaps the Eastern seaboard. I'd certainly rather go here than Kaz Sushi Bistro; I still prefer the much more expensive Sushi Taro, but Slim keeps getting sick every time we go there.
When I was in college, friends would take me for sushi. I was okay with it, but I didn't understand the enthusiasm for sushi—until I got to Los Angeles and discovered the difference between really good sushi and the run-of-the-mill stuff.
I had another revelation yesterday. A good college friend had an Indian girlfriend, and took me out when a Waltham restaurant started offering Southern Indian. Dosas, iddly, uttapam: it was okay, but I didn't get what he found exciting about it. Now I do: Saravana Palace (Fairfax) is quite phenomenal, by far the best Southern Indian and the best vegetarian restaurant I've ever been to. (Though I have not yet been to Udupi Palace in Takoma Park.) Everything from the dosas to the warm gulabjamun was impeccable. The menu is huge, and the weekend buffet offered a sampling of a couple of dozen of the items, plus seven chutneys for make-your-own dal papri and bhel puri. To top it all off, it's ridiculously cheap: only $9.95. Amazingly, this is right across from the Wegman's, it just got named to the Washingtonian Top 100 (and with three stars, no less), and yet Slim and I were the only non-Indians in there. People are missing out. We loved our meal, and didn't even have the paneer makhini or channa batura that Washingtonian raved about.
We craved Ethiopian another night, but couldn't find parking at Abiti. It was a cold night, so for some reason Adams-Morgan offered more parking, and we made our way to Meskerem, which is competent and enjoyable, but not as good as Abiti—though the service is certainly much better and quicker at Meskerem.
Kotobuki (MacArthur Blvd.) is $1/piece sushi. They don't take reservations, and they don't have a wide selection, and I don't buy into Tyler's assertion that this is the best sushi in town, but I will say that it's good enough to be the best sushi value in the city, and perhaps the Eastern seaboard. I'd certainly rather go here than Kaz Sushi Bistro; I still prefer the much more expensive Sushi Taro, but Slim keeps getting sick every time we go there.
When I was in college, friends would take me for sushi. I was okay with it, but I didn't understand the enthusiasm for sushi—until I got to Los Angeles and discovered the difference between really good sushi and the run-of-the-mill stuff.
I had another revelation yesterday. A good college friend had an Indian girlfriend, and took me out when a Waltham restaurant started offering Southern Indian. Dosas, iddly, uttapam: it was okay, but I didn't get what he found exciting about it. Now I do: Saravana Palace (Fairfax) is quite phenomenal, by far the best Southern Indian and the best vegetarian restaurant I've ever been to. (Though I have not yet been to Udupi Palace in Takoma Park.) Everything from the dosas to the warm gulabjamun was impeccable. The menu is huge, and the weekend buffet offered a sampling of a couple of dozen of the items, plus seven chutneys for make-your-own dal papri and bhel puri. To top it all off, it's ridiculously cheap: only $9.95. Amazingly, this is right across from the Wegman's, it just got named to the Washingtonian Top 100 (and with three stars, no less), and yet Slim and I were the only non-Indians in there. People are missing out. We loved our meal, and didn't even have the paneer makhini or channa batura that Washingtonian raved about.
We craved Ethiopian another night, but couldn't find parking at Abiti. It was a cold night, so for some reason Adams-Morgan offered more parking, and we made our way to Meskerem, which is competent and enjoyable, but not as good as Abiti—though the service is certainly much better and quicker at Meskerem.